Anybody making razors via stock removal only?

Just a quick question for the razor makers here. Are any of you not forging them? I haven't noticed any yet. I understand why we forge if we want a pattern welded steel (that is obvious). I forge simply because the steel I have is the wrong shape for a razor. There is enough material there, but in the wrong places (leaf springs and coil springs). If you forge simply because you want to, that is a great reason as well.

I was thinking of buying some new steel for a razor project (80CRV2) and I would simply purchase it with the correct width and thickness to cut and grind it to shape. Hence, I was just curious if there is anyone here that chooses to use stock removal only since I have not ran across any that specified it was a stock removal only project.

This isn't a forged vs stock removal question. This is a question from one hobbyist to another who likes to discuss different techniques as I pick out my steel order.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DVW

Just a quick question for the razor makers here. Are any of you not forging them? I haven't noticed any yet. I understand why we forge if we want a pattern welded steel (that is obvious). I forge simply because the steel I have is the wrong shape for a razor. There is enough material there, but in the wrong places (leaf springs and coil springs). If you forge simply because you want to, that is a great reason as well.

I was thinking of buying some new steel for a razor project (80CRV2) and I would simply purchase it with the correct width and thickness to cut and grind it to shape. Hence, I was just curious if there is anyone here that chooses to use stock removal only since I have not ran across any that specified it was a stock removal only project.

This isn't a forged vs stock removal question. This is a question from one hobbyist to another who likes to discuss different techniques as I pick out my steel order.

---

I am something of a newb at making razors. I have made a few razors, all by stock removal. A forge of some sort is still needed, of course, for annealing and HT'ing. I now have a Paragon electric kiln but before, I was using charcoal and a hair dryer LOL! Magnet for the sticky test, peanut oil for quenching, toaster oven for tempering. A couple came out so-so. A couple (more than a couple, actually) were learning mistakes. A few were pretty decent blades. I even sold a couple. I have two or three around somewhere that I need to find and finish. One of my planned projects is a twin grinder setup and when I have that onstream, I will be making them on a regular basis.

Decide the width you want. Divide by 4. That is your stock thickness, to be quick and dirty about it. If you want a 6/8 blade, start with 3/16" stock. 8/8, 1/4" stock. FULLY anneal the steel before you start cutting and grinding. It will save a lot of time and also grinding media.

I am not familiar with the steel you want to use. I have used 1095 and O1 and I think 1084, and I have a little O1 and 1095 on hand. Good stuff, easy to get decent results.Very common, and good data available. I don't have a "proper" belt grinder, and never have. I will be building my twin grinder out of two 4" x 36" belt sanders. A real, grownup belt grinder, maybe some day.

I have never made a razor from leaf springs, but I have made a couple of knives. It works but a proper tool/cutlery steel is better. I have made kitchen knives out of old circular and tablesaw blades. OLD ones. New ones don't seem to work well for me.

Thanks for the post. I've already made a few razors. I've owned my belt grinder for almost 30 years now and used a variety of steels and techniques over the years, but I'm still very much a "student" when it comes to razors. (They are a different beast) I was just wondering about the advantages of buying metal for forging vs stock removal. Are guys finding that they waste too much steel if they only grind? Can I save a significant amount of money by buying round stock and forging it to 90% complete vs buying a large flat stock and grinding away the majority of it? I can see needing a really wide piece of steel if you had an exaggerated tail design for example and were not forging. I've noticed that guys are buying flat stock and then forging that into a razor. Am I missing an advantage to doing that?

Bob Allman was stock removal mostly and Brian Brown did stock removal for his production line

Butch Harner, also

I looked up Butch Harner. He does nice work and is kind enough to post his techniques and even his failures. I noticed that he is using 52100 for razors, so I guess that could be another reason for stock removal. That can be tricky to forge. Unless someone else has another thought, then I don't see any reasons other than price, availability and razor design for not ordering a piece sized for stock removal. Thanks guys:tu

Depending on how well you forge, you need to spend a lot less time grinding and removing stock if your grinding phase starts with a blank that is forged close to size.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bruno

Depending on how well you forge, you need to spend a lot less time grinding and removing stock if your grinding phase starts with a blank that is forged close to size.

---

True, I tend to find that I prefer forging over grinding.

What Bruno said.

I hear that 80crv2 is pretty easy move on the anvil. I was actually looking at some of my tool steel bar stock a few minutes before I logged in. The amount of waste to make an 8/8 razor would be the equivalent of 2 razors if I forged them. I can fairly easily get a 10/8 out of 1/4 x 1” bar stock.
Knives for me are the tools that I want to do stock removal for. Hammering in a tip, reducing the tang and drawing it out. Lots of hammering, then making it thin and flat enough as not spend all day grinding to straighten out my poor blacksmithing skills.

As far as time and enjoyment go, for me? Forge a razor, stock removal for knives. Though that being said I haven’t made a stock removal knife yet but plan on doing so for the next try at some chef’s knives.

As an aside, CrescentCity, would love to see some pictures of your work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jfk742

What Bruno said.

I hear that 80crv2 is pretty easy move on the anvil. I was actually looking at some of my tool steel bar stock a few minutes before I logged in. The amount of waste to make an 8/8 razor would be the equivalent of 2 razors if I forged them. I can fairly easily get a 10/8 out of 1/4 x 1” bar stock.
Knives for me are the tools that I want to do stock removal for. Hammering in a tip, reducing the tang and drawing it out. Lots of hammering, then making it thin and flat enough as not spend all day grinding to straighten out my poor blacksmithing skills.

As far as time and enjoyment go, for me? Forge a razor, stock removal for knives. Though that being said I haven’t made a stock removal knife yet but plan on doing so for the next try at some chef’s knives.

As an aside, CrescentCity, would love to see some pictures of your work.

---

Don't have any on hand, though there are two or three barely started blanks laying around somewhere. And some GD regrinds that you might find particularly interesting. It was actually regrinding the GDs that got me interested in stock removal razors. I will get some pics up tomorrow or the next day.

Ok so I started my first razor in earnest via stock removal, 1095 steel.

Is it possible to overheat the steel via grinding before heat treating? I was shaping the tail with an angle grinder and it turned bluish. Now I know after heat treating you can ruin the temper, but I wasn't initially concerned about it while rough shaping. Figured it was worth an ask.

Secondly for my initial trials at this would i be wise to send my razors out for professional heat treating, or is this something I should just try myself? There is a local guy that charges $8 a razor plus shipping to heat treat which sounds really fair, but he sends them out in batches and it might take 6 weeks. I have a small forge and was gonna use knowledge from here, basically color, to try it myself.

Eventually I'd like to forge and heat treat and do it all from scratch, but thinking I might get better results and be less discouraged if I step into it, hence stock removal and pro heat treating.

Attached is a pic, don't hold your breath for me to finish it, it's taken me a long time to get to this point.
Attachment 327724

I'll be no help, but that is an interesting shape.

I always try to keep the steel from getting too hot in my pre-harden grinding, I don't think it hurts if it does get hot though. I use layout blue to scribe my outlines and if the piece gets too hot the layout blue burns off and it becomes difficult to see my outline so keeping the piece cool has a practical importance.

When hogging off material coarse belts are your friend, I use a 36 grit ceramic for roughing the outline and this keeps the piece much cooler than using something like even a 60 grit belt.

As far as heat treating if you are diligent you should be able to do it yourself even with a simple gas forge. You want to heat the steel up until a magnet no longer sticks, then go a bit hotter. The blade will have a uniformity of glow that you don't see if you simply go to non magnetic. You may even observe decalescence (looks like a shadow radiating over the blade before getting brighter) and you should quench after you observe this. Quenchant can be warm canola/peanut/vegetable oil. Don't use water unless you are using an alloy specifically formulated for water quenching. You want to temper reasonably quickly after hardening, use a toaster oven or even your home oven if you have a reliable oven thermometer or a grill probe to get an accurate temperature. Put something heavy in the oven like a cast iron pan so that the interior temperature doesn't fluctuate too much as the oven cycles (especially important for electric ovens). Temperature and time are obviously dependent on the steel alloy used.

As long as you avoid any obvious mistakes there is no reason that you cannot make a quality blade with only simple tools. Taking your time and being conscientious in your work are the most important things.

With any luck you will hear from Victor, Scott, Bruno, or Mike soon, they know what their doing. Charlie is really good too. I can give my advise, but I’ve only done a few, those guys have done thousands and know what their talking about, fun shape on yours, but not sure how it’s will be stropping and shaving.

Do not worry about the steel getting hot while grinding pre heat treatment. It is fine for the steel to turn blue from the heat of grinding prior to hardening. The steel will be fixed or reset during heat treat.

Sock removal and farming out the heat treat is a great way to start. I started that way then slowly moved to doing my own heat treat.

Doing it yourself is a lot of fun but there are quite a few details to see to, and a lot of ways to end up with less than optimum end result. When you send it out, you eliminate some of those wild cards. $8 for a razor and a one razor minimum sounds pretty good. As far as the wait goes, that should be time to grind out another razor!

One important basic thing is to watch your blade thickness. It is tempting to do all of your grinding before heat treating, while the steel is soft, but you don't want the blade to get too thin before HT. About .040" is pretty tame. Around .030" you can expect a razor or two to warp a bit or even crack, but not very often. That's about 1/32". At .020" you are on pretty shaky ground and I would stay thicker than that. At that thickness you will probably be losing some, depending on the technical details of the heat and quench, and your alloy. Eventually experience will be your guide. So they say. I haven't got there yet. If you send your blades out, stick with the same guy all the time so you develop an idea of what grind works and what doesn't.

Before heat treating, I don't worry about a little blue stain here and there. You CAN ruin a piece by heating too high, too many times, but I think you would probably have to get up to at least dull red heat before you would really have a serious problem.

I have only done my own HT and a couple came out pretty good, a couple not so good but usable. A few practice pieces of which a couple cracked on me. This was in a charcoal fire with a hair dryer as the draft source, magnet for testing (going a little brighter after the magnet no longer sticks) and quenching in warm veg oil. Low tech works, it just isn't as controlled and precise. Now I have a nice regulated Paragon kiln but I haven't used it yet, and I have a bucket of Park 50 quench oil that likewise hasn't been used yet. Some day. I will do another razor with my new toys. I think I am done with the uncertainties of the barbecue razor.

It is more practical to send your blades out for HT but more fun and challenging to do them yourself. I guess its all about whether you are more interested in enjoying the making, or enjoying the having.

When a blade is forged to shape, it is heated to orange hot numerous times. When the blade is normalized during the heat treat process the damage (grain sized, distribution) is repaired. The forged blade will harden just fine. Do not sweat overheating the blade before pre heat treat grinding.

The steel you are making your stock removal blade from is most likely in a good state to harden from. My rule of thumb is if it is too hot to hold while grinding I cool it in water, but that is just for comforts sake, not the state of the steel.

I think the sending it out to be heat treated at that price is a good starting point.

There is so much to learn and keeping that at a minimum to begin with is not a bad idea.

Grind away and learn to grind then learn heat treating.

I like your design but I think that there is to much arch to the tang.

Have fun and go for it but you will see why though.

Been there and done that!:)

32t I think the tang might have too much arch too, was gonna figure it out as I go, rather leave too much and later take some off than take too much right off the bat. This is kind of a rigarazor knock-off, a different spanish/ French point, a little more swayback, and a depew-ish tail.

I think I'm gonna try some more basic simpler designs to start (non-smiling, square point, smaller straighter tail) and try my own heat treat. These will be to practice rough grind, shape, proportions, layout, tools, workflow, heat treat, final finishing, etc. Hopefully I can crank through some simpler ones to work out the kinks rather than set out to create my masterpiece right off the bat only to get disappointed. I'll see how it goes and take it from there. If I suck at heat treat but everything else is decent maybe I'll send them out.

It is so nice to get advice from the members and custom makers, I'm pretty sure if you like exotic cars you can't just type in a forum and have Enzo Ferrari mentor you personally. Thanks.

.
.
Welcome to SRP. :) and thanks for the question.

I have made a few razors in the distant past using both stock removal and forging. You will learn a lot from each method so I suggest that you try both.
I started by using old files that cost me very little. From that I learned that once I had annealed and ground off the teeth on the file that the stock was to thin for a 7/8 or 8/8 razor.... and I had some big files to start with!:) Also, do not make the mistake of trying to use an old rasp. You will go thru so many grinding belts trying to remove the "teeth" that you would be better off buying 4 ft of flat stock. :)
Most people do not pay enough attention to the tempering stage. The toaster/kitchen oven is not sufficiently stable in temperature by itself. At a minimum I agree that having some other large piece of steel in the oven would help stabilize the temperature flucuations.
Have fun with your adventure.:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randydance062449

From that I learned that once I had annealed and ground off the teeth on the file that the stock was to thin for a 7/8 or 8/8 razor.... and I had some big files to start with!:)

---

As far as dimensions go, common advice I had seen was for the width to thickness ratio to be 4:1 but IMO this is actually still too thin. Your edge to spine width should be around 3.5 times the stock thickness. This gives an angle about 16.5 degrees honing without any tape.

Yep 4 to 1 works pretty good, the top razor makers seem to think this works, the ones I have made and all the customs I had commissioned are perfect. So don’t reinvent the wheel when the wheel is perfect, but it can be adjusted because of mistakes

The 4:1 number is a maximum. Beyond that then the edge gets chippy.

Yeah a while ago I bought (3) 1.5" x 0.25" x 36" bars of 1095 to start with, so that is my starting point. I had a harbor freight bench grinder that turns out was way too weak, files that were old harbor freight that were pretty ineffective, was using a hacksaw to cut the bar which took forever. Got an angle grinder which really sped up shaping, got some vintage files today on the cheap, have a chop saw at work I can make gross cuts on the bar. Hoping better tools will make it less frustrating and in turn keep me motivated.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NittanyGator

Yeah a while ago I bought (3) 1.5" x 0.25" x 36" bars of 1095 to start with, so that is my starting point. I had a harbor freight bench grinder that turns out was way too weak, files that were old harbor freight that were pretty ineffective, was using a hacksaw to cut the bar which took forever. Got an angle grinder which really sped up shaping, got some vintage files today on the cheap, have a chop saw at work I can make gross cuts on the bar. Hoping better tools will make it less frustrating and in turn keep me motivated.

---

My first 20 were soooo baaaaaad! :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by randydance062449

My first 20 were soooo baaaaaad! :)

---

Oh yeah, lots of fugly in past razors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spazola

Oh yeah, lots of fugly in past razors.

---

Just call it 'brut de forge' :p